“I suppose you’re used to taking care of things yourself.”
Ana snapped open the lid and discovered packets of batteries, two flashlights, and a small transistor radio. She avoided his gaze, loading fresh batteries into a flashlight. “Yes, I am. Which is why I wanted to talk to you in private.”
She slid onto a chair and waited while he righted another and sat.
“After what’s happened I’m aware I can’t do what I want to without help—your help,” she said.
Daniel crossed his arms and leaned on the table, his face a portrait of relaxed neutrality. “What sort of help are we talking about?” No former trace of annoyance remained in his voice.
“Help to get home to my kids.”
His expression didn’t alter. “It might not be possible to even get out of this building for a while.”
“There must be a way.”
“Look, authorities will turn up sooner or later with equipment to get you all out. You’ll just have to be patient.”
Arms folded in tight bands across her chest, Ana said, “Get you all out? You’ll have to be patient? From the way you phrased that my guess is you weren’t including yourself as part of the you.”
“Nope.”
Superheated blood flowed beneath her skin and singed her cheeks. “So where will you be?”
Chapter 7
Daniel stretched his long legs out under the table, as if they were having a chat at a cozy café rather than snatching a moment of sanity in a world gone mad. “I’ll be on the way to your house to check on Nadia and your little girl.”
Eyes narrowed to lashed slits, Ana’s fingernails tapped a staccato beat on her upper arm. “Like hell. I asked for your help, not as a damsel in distress who’ll stay here while you be the big hero, but as an equal.”
Daniel shifted position, rocking back on his chair so it balanced precariously on two legs. He folded his arms, the subtle shift of his Adam’s apple the only indication of emotion. Something flickered behind his eyes before vanishing like heat rising off a desert highway.
“From where I sit you look exactly like a pain in the ass damsel. I’m no hero, but when it comes to survival in this sort of environment, you’re not my equal.”
Ana rarely, if ever, let raw emotion direct her actions. Raw emotions ungoverned by self-control led to bad decisions and life-altering mistakes. Ask her how she knew. But like a lighter touched to a pile of dry leaves, fury, pure and bright, flared in her gut. “I’m coming with you.”
“No. Absolutely no fucking way. It’s too dangerous.”
Ana jerked at the blunt aggression in his tone but refused to back down. “I’m not asking for your permission. I’m telling you. Whether you help me or not, I am getting out of this building.”
He snorted out a huff through curved lips.
Of all the arrogant—
Her back teeth clicked together. “Nadia will be doing her best to care for Alyssa”—she held up a hand to stop him interrupting—“but she’s only twenty-two years old, and as much as I trust her, as much as I know she’s capable and kind and I now consider her more a friend than an employee, she’s still on her own with a traumatized toddler.” Her hand trembled, picturing Alyssa sobbing inconsolably, or worse, staring into space.
“Theo is thirteen and thinks he’s indestructible. He’s not. He’s still a kid, probably assuming he can make it home alone. He can’t. As you pointed out, it’s dangerous out there.”
She planted her palms on the table and got right in his face. “One way or another, you jackass—even if I have to slide down the cables in the elevator shaft and crawl every mile from here to home—I am going to my kids.”
He stared, unflinching. “You’re nuts enough to try it anyway, aren’t you? You’ll be dead within five minutes.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” She dropped back into her seat, glaring icicles at him. “So help me, then.”
“What makes you think I can get you home safely?”
“Nadia told me you were in the army. She also said you were a free runner or a ninja or something.”
“The army was a long time ago, and I used to practice parkour—which is different to the show-off free runners.” He stared at a spot beyond her shoulders for a beat before his gaze met hers again, this time laughter lines crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Trust me, I’m no ninja.” He waved a dismissive hand. “It’s one thing for me to navigate through the city. I’ve had the training; you haven’t.”
“But—”
The two chair legs squeaked in protest as Daniel rocked back and forth. “How often do you work out every week?”
She wished the chair would collapse and drop him on his overconfident butt. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Humor me.”
“Three mornings a week at the gym for cardio and weight training.”
“How often do you go hiking?”
“What? I don’t. I’m not into that outdoorsy stuff, unless you count throwing a ball around in the yard with the kids. Some weekends Theo and I will go for a ride on our bikes—oh, and we’ve done the southern and northern city walks.” She couldn’t keep the note of triumph out of her voice.
Daniel seemed less than impressed. “Well, Ana, I guarantee you your experience with four- to five-hour strolls on maintained council tracks are nothing like what you’ll find outside now. Even if you were an outdoorsy type, getting home wouldn’t come close to anything you’ve ever experienced. It’ll be a war zone out there.”
“I don’t care.”
“I’m serious.” He folded his arms again and dropped his chair back to the floor.
She mirrored his body language. “So am I.”
“Are you always so pigheaded?”
Before she could answer, he stood and pulled her to her feet, his hand warm on the chilled skin of her bare elbow. “Come look at this.”
Daniel half dragged Ana across the staff room to where she could see, through the mouth of jagged bricks, the carnage of the road below.
“Is that water down there?” she said.
“Yeah. A tsunami rolled in after the earthquake. Probably more than one wave, too.”
“Tsunami.” Each syllable stuck to her tongue like it was pressed to frosted metal. “My home is on top of a hill, so Alyssa and Nadia should be fine. But Theo’s school is not far from the beach. Right in a tsunami’s path.”
She chafed her hands along her arms and a rash of goose bumps pimpled under her fingertips. “This morning Theo has PE, I think. He’d have been out on the sports field when the earthquake struck.”
“If Theo was on a field when the quake struck, there’s a good chance he’s fine.”
“The school is on flat ground.” Daniel’s words barely registered. A mental blueprint of the school’s layout superimposed over what her memory recalled of tsunami footage in the media. “There’s a hill a few minutes’ walk behind his school. Theo’s been taught what to do in an earthquake. If he suspected a tsunami, he’d have run for higher ground.”
She was talking herself into a sense of optimism, but she had to cling to the belief Theo had recognized the warning signs and fled to safety. She had to. What else could she do? To contemplate anything else would be to infect her will with black despair before she’d even attempted to get home.
They watched the violent surge of water, with nothing but the creaks and moans of the building settling around them to break the awkward silence.
Finally Daniel spoke. “Theo sounds like a resourceful kid. We can’t tell how bad the quake was at his school until we find a way out of here, but we’ll find him.”
“We?”
He paused, tension rippling off him. “Yeah. I guess it’s we. Nadia would make my life hell if her jackass of a brother let her boss commit suicide by trying to get home alone. But here’s the thing—you listening?”
Ana turned slightly and met his gaze. “I’m listening.”
“You can’t
do anything rash and reckless like climbing down elevator shafts to get to your kids. If you die, they’ll have no one.”
The lump constricting her throat moved up and down as she nodded. “Okay.”
“So first we have to find a way to get down from here since the stairs are gone. And second, once we’re out, you’ll do exactly what I tell you.” He looked down through narrowed eyes, likely waiting for an argument.
Ana trapped her tongue between her teeth and assembled a passively agreeable expression on her face.
“Third, we can’t leave the safety of this building until the waves stop coming.”
She opened her mouth to object, closed it again while she thought, and sighed. “Because the water will make it too dangerous to travel.”
“Exactly, and the waves could keep coming for hours.”
They could be trapped in here for hours? “No—it’ll be getting dark by five.”
“Yeah, it will. But I’m not—not”—he held up his hand when she grimaced—“allowing you to climb down from this building in the dark. Agreed?”
Theo. Alyssa. Her teeth jammed down on her lower lip, trapping the rising scream inside. Tears slid hotly along her lower lids but she blinked them away before they could spill over, and pulled her gaze back from the carnage outside. “Yes, all right. Agreed.”
After a moment, Daniel reached over and took one of her hands, rubbing his large rough fingers over the indentation where her wedding ring once nestled. “We’ll find them.” He squeezed once and let her hand fall back against her side.
She turned away from the gaping hole that showed only a sliver of blue sky. “I have to.” The breeze swept into the room, whisking her voice away. “I have to find them both.”
Chapter 8
Friday, July 23. 3:35 p.m. Seatoun, an eastern suburb of Wellington, New Zealand.
* * *
Freedom, when it came, signaled only the beginning. The others hadn’t abandoned him, whether from duty or because they genuinely liked the face he presented to the world.
He didn’t much care.
Cooperatively they worked together to pull the chunks of wood and concrete off his desk until he could squeeze out of the gap and emerge, uninjured but with a fire smoldering deep in his gut, threatening to rage out of control. He wanted to move now, or this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity would be gone.
The cravings for freedom and revenge were put on hold when he and the rest of them waited in terrified clusters while tsunami waves slammed into their building. Part of him stood aloof, appreciating the irony of the relentless surge.
Even the forces of nature couldn’t snuff out his quest.
The building held against the onslaught, and after hours of miserable inactivity, officials deemed it safe to leave. Shuffling with the rest of his group down the worn stairs and out into the fresh air, he glanced around, a caged beast trapped by a thin veneer of civility.
Propriety was a thorn in his side. He couldn’t up and leave when the expectation of his leadership was reflected on the faces of those who looked to him so desperately. The catch to his plan? If he wanted a normal life after dispatching the monster and his bitch daughter, then he needed to play this out carefully. Perhaps the greatest acting job of his career so far.
Everywhere he turned, voices clamored for his attention. “Sir, Sir?”
He shrugged on his friendliest and most genial persona—encouraging, reassuring, and telling jokes to coax watery smiles. Herding his group of stragglers across the cracked and muddy concrete, Harrison Burbank spotted the person he hoped to see by the school’s emergency meeting area.
Good to see you made it out alive, Theodore Grace.
The smile that stretched his lips wide was carnivorous and no longer friendly.
Welcome to your starring role.
Chapter 9
Friday, July 23. 4:01 p.m. Lower Hutt, greater Wellington area, New Zealand.
* * *
The conference room of Cameron and Holt Law was the same as every other blow-your-brains-out-boring conference room Daniel had ever been in. Fortunately, running adventure farm tours with his dad and younger brother, Matt, didn’t present many opportunities to be stuck in one.
Bland taupe walls, mushroom-toned carpet, and a large honey-colored conference table and chairs decorated the room. Only the quirky watercolors that Joel boasted were his wife’s creation gave the insipid decor any point of interest. Not that he was claustrophobic, but damn. What he wouldn’t give to be out of this room, which slyly seemed to shrink as the hours ticked by.
The four of them—he and Ana, Joel and Maggie—were propped against the wall like a row of drooping flowers, huddled together under the conference table. Their supplies were stacked beneath the reception coffee table he’d carried in. They sat on cushions from the reception sofas, but he’d given his to Joel who needed something soft to rest his injured arm on. Reports from the small radio, punctuated by hissing static, painted a grim picture of the outside world.
“Someone should’ve seen the towels hanging out of the window by now.” Joel stretched in the confined space, arching his back with a wince. “When can I have some more paracetamol, Ana? Bloody useless though the stuff is.”
“You’ve just had some. I’m sure someone will come to investigate the towels soon.” Ana had only just come back under the table, having spent most of the afternoon pacing the length of the room and glaring out the empty windows. As if her force of will would cause the tsunami waters to vanish.
Joel huffed and slumped back against the wall. It had been Ana’s idea to hang the staff room tea towels from the windows around their floor to try and attract attention. A few people braved the streets since the waves had finally stopped rolling inland, but the only voices they heard in response to their shouts were those of people trapped in the floor below.
Aftershocks struck at regular intervals. By unanimous agreement they had all decided to remain under the table. The cramped conditions and the ever-present chilly breeze blowing in through the broken windows made patience among the four of them strained.
Yet Ana never lost her cool, even when Joel bitched and moaned about his arm, or drove them crazy cracking endless lawyer jokes. He had to give her credit for that. She shifted next to him again, delivering another wave of perfume to tantalize his senses. He was no expert on women’s fragrances, but when breathing her in, he thought of warm spices in the faraway tropics, lush and exotic. He risked a glance.
With the back of her head resting against the wall, Ana’s eyelashes cast spiked shadows on her cheekbones flushed pink with the heat. Hair the color of his mother’s antique mahogany sideboard escaped her clip and spilled across her shoulders. His gaze followed the slope of café au lait skin under her collarbone to the rise of her breasts, dipping to her abdomen before straightening out to the length of her legs.
Ripping his gaze from the luscious shape of her, he scrutinized the underside of the table, focusing on the wood grain. Why in the world had he agreed to her crazy idea? A shot at redemption? Was he cocky enough to risk a life in order to make up for the one he’d screwed up years ago? Perhaps. But it was more than that.
Ana pushed buttons in him that he’d thought were long deactivated. He knew without a doubt she would make good on her threat to find a way home to her kids using any means available. He’d reluctantly agreed to help, because how could he let her go alone? It was basic human decency.
Face it, Calder, his conscience needled. Decency wasn’t in the forefront of your mind a few moments ago when you were checking her out. He didn’t need the added complication of being attracted to a woman he felt obligated to help.
He sighed, drew his knees up off the floor, and rested his head on his arms. It was going to be a long night.
“Hey, I got another one.” Joel yawned into the silence. “What’s the definition of mixed emotions?”
Ana turned her head in stiff increments toward him. The sun had sunk below the neighboring bu
ilding an hour ago, and the natural light in the conference room was almost gone. Joel had yelled at her to stop pacing and get under the damn table before an aftershock dropped the ceiling on her head.
She dragged a smile to her lips. “An hour in which you don’t tell us another lame lawyer joke?”
A soft chuckle came from Daniel on her other side.
Joel’s face wrinkled into a grin. “Nup. It’s watching your lawyer drive over a cliff in your new Ferrari.”
“You slay me; you really do.”
“I know, I know,” he crowed. “One day I’m gonna give this law gig away and do stand-up.”
She forced out a laugh and patted his hand. He was doing the best he knew how to distract them from melting into hysterical worry. “You’ll knock ’em dead.”
“You’re a good friend, Ana Banana. Patronizing, but a good friend.” He yawned again and smacked his lips sleepily.
“Try to get some sleep.”
This time his use of a pet name, which usually rankled, only made her wistful, raising memories of happier times spent with Joel’s wife, Lucy, one of her closest friends. And if she let her mind go down that rabbit hole, she really would go nuts. Joel’s two girls went to school near their house and Luce was a stay-at-home artist mum who likely would’ve been working in her studio. They’d be fine. Just like Ana’s dad, her kids, and her other friends, everyone was going to be fine.
But tugging the blanket higher under her chin, she couldn’t suppress a tiny shiver. Once the sun had disappeared, so had her hopes of a rescue before dark. They were stuck there for the night. Icy teeth of despair sank deep into her guts.
The temperature dropped with the cold salt-laced air blowing through the shattered windows, billowing the curtains into ghostly shapes. She thought about crawling out from under the table and checking the water level below one last time. Toward the center of the city, sounds of heavy machinery roared and the eerie glow of huge spotlights lit up the darkness. Rescuers were out there somewhere. Just not here.
Quake Page 4
